DIY M9750 Motherboard Fix

So, a little introduction is in place, but first what this ghetto fix applies to:
Your M9750 appears to boot, works perfectly, but alas no picture is present on the screen nor on external outputs

Now the introduction, skip down to the pictures gallore of the mod in action if your not up for the read...

My m9750 started misbehaving around 2months ago, at an ever increasing rate the internal LCD would not come on
nor would there be any picture on my external screen hooked up on the DVI. I fixed it by just turning the
laptop on and off until the picture came on. This of course happened after my warranty had expired and after
Alienware CS demanded ~200$ just to try and diagnose the system over the phone I said it.
Then around 3weeks ago it would not come on at all. I did all the usual stuff at eliminating the presumably faulty hardware, different
memory modules, with/without harddrives, no slave card in the system etc. Nothing worked, though from time to time the pc would
turn on but only momentarily. When it booted the mouse would suddently disappear, and the system appeared to have frozen i.e. the screen didn't update, usually I would
see that as a complete system freeze, but caps lock/num lock would still work. During that, I was able to remote to the system, ran a few stress
tests, but the screen never came on again. First clue to what was wrong was that device manager didnt show ANY graphic cards present in the system,
mind you this was while the PC had booted with picture on the internal screen...

This boggled me, so I deemed the Master 8700M GT to be the one at fault here, since leaving only the Slave 8700M GT in the machine resulted in the
lcd turning on during boot, but ofc not displaying anything.
As you know, the only difference between the 8700M GT Master and Slave is their Bios.
So I downloaded a 8700M GT Bios, put the Slave card in the primary slot, booted to dos, and in blind flashed the card.
Those that wanna try this, download NVFlash, boot to dos and type:

1. nvflash --protectoff
2. nvflash yourromname.rom
3. nvflash --protecton
4. reboot and cross your fingers (caps+num lock will turn on/off after another while its flashing your new bios)

After I had flashed the old 8700M GT Slave to a 8700M GT Master variant, the screen would still not turn on. So it was definately not the Graphics Cards that was the culprit in
in this misbehaving m9750. The Motherboards Primary Graphic Card connector were to blame, or the cooling system being old and used and not applying enough pressue on the graphics card.

Lazy readers, start here!
Now the Ghetto mod:
To check if this applies to you, take off the back cover of your M9750, apply a great deal of pressure on your primary graphics card (right on top of where the copper ends on the GPU)
and start the system. It can take a few tries to get it right, if your screen turns on again, the following will fix your situation (it did for me):

1. Take out the screws holding the touchbuttons and power buttons in place.
2. Take out the screws for the keyboard
3. Remove the touchbutton"thing" and remove the keyboard.
4. Remove the screw holding the small metallic cover in place and bend it backwards, you might have to reapply the tape.

5. Add around ~5 ~6mm of copper coins on the top of the intel"thing" (pictured below) -I used danish 50oere, those are of ~1.5mm thickness



6. Rescrew the metallic cover, as you can see below it will bend, MAKE sure the coins stay in place!



7. As you can see below, the area above the spacebar will flex a bit, but thats OK for me seeing I now how a fully working, although a bit ghetto, M9750


This applies pressure on the bottom of the primary GPU resulting in a small lift within the connector on the motherboard, thus restoring the
missing connection. At least, that's my theory, make of it what you will

Now I have a little request from the trusty lurkers/members here at NBR, since I now have 2 8700M GT Master cards due to my flashing, I would be
really gratefull if one of you could upload your Slave 8700M GT Bios. I never took a backup of my card before I flashed it, it sucks
not having SLI . You can use GPU-Z to save your graphicscard BIOS, if your in doubt which card you're saving, just take both and upload
them to some filesharing place

Remember, this will void your warranty and can result in you bricking your system completely, so use this "guide"/idea at your own risk!
If it works, you will have saved ~190$ for a new motherboard (current EBAY listings)

Happy "modding" (Its not a real mod, it falls somewhat short of the category as I didnt know any other term that would fit)
-Sunksat

One last thing, I still recommend Alienware to all my friends even though it has troubled me in the past, its a great and awesome product.
-got a bit tired of all the negative posts regarding Alienware, check my post history if you wanna read up on the "horrors" I have exprienced haha
Thanks for reading

 

Cool, I always appreciate people going out there and finding solutions

You may want to try Arctic Silver Adhesive. Its a two part bonding agent, you can use to affix the coins together.
If you leave them loose, there is the possibility that the coins can get loose and short out parts of your motherboard

K-TRON

 

lol, it also increases the value of your computer by a couple of cents.

What a creative repair!

 

Damn I slack, thanks for the heads up+kind words hehe.
I have ordered the adhesive you suggested k-tron, lets see what the laptop says to that

Btw, I still need the 8700M Slave Card bios, if anyone has it, I would be very grateful if you could upload it somewhere , need the SLi power

 

I have a very similar problem, except that i only have 1 GPU. So i can't do the BIOS thing. I tried applying pressure to it, but nothing happened. How much pressure am i to exert onto it?

 

Let me get back to you on that one, I changed the "mod" since I wrote this post. Instead of adding the coins to the Intel "thing" I apply pressure directly on the heat sink attached to the SLI Bridge (still using the same amount of coins), will post pictures of it later when I get hold of my Camera again.
You could try and apply an increasing pressure on the SLI Bridge with your fingers until the machine turns on. Pictures will come later.
If this doesnt yield any results, try to find the post here on NBR with the guide on how to "cook" your GPU, should that prove to be faulty.
Remember all the stuff about frying your hardware and all that

 

Thanks for the response, ill try that.

I don't have SLI, but do it anyway?

 

God damn i lookes like it worked for me to.
Thx for the help Sunksat aka T.

Hope to see u some time next year at the Uni.